Mike Baranik started building electric guitars in 1994 after graduating from Roberto-Venn School of Luthiery. At the time, he was listening to lots of guitar music including surf, the Ventures, Duane Eddy, Los Straightjackets, the Hellecasters, etc. Baranik made maybe a half dozen electrics before branching off to acoustic guitars. As his business, Baranik Guitars, became busier and successful he completely stopped thinking about electric guitars and also stopped playing them for over fifteen years. Then, in 2012, Baranik had a customer ask him to make an electric guitar. He made a couple electrics and started tinkering with shapes and getting back into them. He also started playing electric guitar again in 2014 after a long break. He found an old Danelectro amp from the '60s and it reignited his love for surf music.

Baranik joined a surf rock band in 2016 and wanted to make the perfect retro surf guitar that would be inspired by his love of the weird '60s Teisco guitars, which always looked great but where hard to play with their thick necks and cheap hardware. So he designed the model B-1 in 2017 and made three prototypes in 2018. Two went to local musicians and he used the third one in his band.

The B-1 was refined and tweaked over the course of 2018 and the first production B-1 models were presented at the 2019 NAMM show.